Werner Stief

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Werner Stief (* 1905 ; † 1982 ) was a German folklorist . From 1945 to 1948 he was director of the State Museum for German Folklore in Berlin. In addition, he worked at the Berlin Museum of Ethnology .

Life

In his youth, Werner Stief was active in the Wandervogel movement. In 1938 he published his monograph Pagan symbols on Christian churches and on works of folk art. The "tree of life" and its shape change over the course of the year , in which he took a stand against Christian iconography . He analyzed the animal and plant ornaments on early Christian buildings as symbols that traced back to Indo-European times, since in the ornaments, in contrast to figurative representations, the Nordic-Pagan would often have been expressed. The publication in the series of publications of the German Ahnenerbe Forschungsgemeinschaft was thus in the context of national science.

In July 1938, Stief received a work contract at the State Museum for German Folklore in Berlin, and from April 1940 he was employed there as a research assistant. As the only research assistant remaining at the museum at the end of the Second World War , he was given the management of the museum in May 1945. Under his leadership, the first clean-up work in the warehouse building on Splittgerbergasse and the return of relocated museum assets from the city area took place. Step-navigated subsequently his career under the terms of the split among the four victorious powers City: On the one hand, the State Museum of German folklore participated under his leadership in December 1946 of under the Soviet military administration aligned in the castle museum exhibition reunion with museum pieces with a small collection. On the other hand, as head of the Folklore Museum, after an order from the City of Berlin's magistrate regarding the saving of administrative staff in the museums , Stief accepted part-time employment at the Folklore Museum , which was located in Berlin-Dahlem - outside the Soviet zone. As a result, Stief moved work materials and library holdings from the Museum of German Folklore, despite the ban on bringing cultural goods from the Soviet occupation zone to the American sector . Stief turned down the offer in the first half of 1948 to use Köpenick Castle as a museum building in the future. As a result, instructions were given to store the museum holdings in the basement of the castle museum, which was only reversed in autumn 1948 with the assistance of General Director Ludwig Justi . As a result of the currency reform in the western occupation zones on August 14, 1948, Stief and the last remaining scientific specialist gave up his position at the Museum of German Folklore. Its management was provisionally taken over by the director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Martin Klar , when his museum was relocated from the Berlin City Palace to the former lodge building on Splittgerbergasse.

As a result, Stief continued his work at the Völkerkundemuseum in Dahlem.

Werner Stief was married to Elisabeth Stief. His son Wiegand Stief was born on May 3, 1941.

Publications

  • Pagan symbols on Christian churches and on works of folk art. The "Tree of Life" and its shape change over the course of the year , Hase & Koehler, Leipzig 1938.
  • A figurative beehive? , in: Baessler Archive, Volume 28 (1955), pp. 233-238.
  • Olla and cántaro. Special exhibition , Museum of Ethnology, Berlin 1965.

literature

  • Erika Karasek , A Century of Commitment to Folklore 1889-1989 , in: Museum für Volkskunde (Hrsg.), Clothing Between Tracht and Mode. From the history of the museum 1889-1989 , Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin 1989, pp. 5–48.

Individual evidence

  1. Winfried Mogge, "You wandering birds in the air ...". Findings on the migration of a romantic picture and the self-staging of a youth movement , Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8260-4023-8 , p. 34.
  2. ^ Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Tradition stories. Paradigmata of folklore cultural research , De Gruyter, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-042844-5 , p. 431f.
  3. Erika Karasek, A Century of Commitment to Folklore 1889-1989 , in: Museum for Folklore (Hrsg.), Clothing between costume and fashion. From the history of the museum 1889-1989 , Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin 1989, pp. 5–48, here: p. 14.
  4. Erika Karasek, From the Museum of German Folklore to the Museum of European Cultures. The checkered history of a museum between 1945 and 1999 , in: Dagmar Neuland-Kitzerow and Leonore Scholze-Irrlitz (eds.), Actors - Practices - Theories. The ethnographer Ute Mohrmann on her seventieth birthday , LIT Verlag, Münster 2010, pp. 38–46, here: p. 40.